Month: May 2023

Sorts and Purposes

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It takes me a very long time to come to the point, in fact, before I bury it again, let’s begin with it: the purpose of the Autist is to explain the Neurotypical to the Neurotypical.

We are a mirror, instructive by contrast. What a neurotype cannot see of itself, it can of another type, and vice versa. The Autist, familiar with their own mind, learns what a Neurotypical mind is by listening to them describe ours, the one we know – by a process like arithmetic we can glean what sort of mind theirs is.

It would seem the reverse is not happening, the Neurotypical, familiar with their own minds, rarely learns what an Autistic mind is by listening to us describe theirs, the one they know, and applying the addition or subtraction of our perceptions – thus my partially tongue in cheek new term for the most common, or dominant type – robust. They are not so easily given to introspection, the implicit reverse logic and the opportunity to audit themselves this way doesn’t seem to occur to them.

I think it’s a neurotypical trait, the darkest side of which is conformism, a sort of a policy that other sorts are not equal and comparable. It’s not an insult, it’s a requirement for their very typicality and dominance, isn’t it?

But it’s exactly my point.

This is exactly the sort of thing that everyone else knowing it doesn’t mean jack. They have to know it, somehow, I mean they have to know it’s only a neurotypical trait, rather than God’s Universal Bloody Will, right?

And that impossible job is ours.

It is not our job to explain to the genetically unconsciously xenophobic about all the different sorts out there, that is obviously impossible, they aren’t even interested.

It is our job to explain to them how their way of life is killing the planet and that they won’t survive it either. Right? I may be new as an Autist who knows it, but I am not new as a human being and the framing is always theirs and it is always wrong, and the abuse is always named after the victim, and the abuser has no name, it’s just . . . typical. Because with names comes shame. They are not going to do it themselves. If you have seen the quality of what they call “research,” regarding Autism, you know, they are never going to classify themselves in their system of faults and treatments.

Our job – and I’m tired of doing it alone, honestly.

Jump in any time, Kids.

Jeff May 26th., 2023

Gonzo Science – Your Fighting Genes

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Gawd, the propaganda is so obtuse, so horrifying simple and false. The flighty sounding talk about self-knowledge isn’t always high level, it’s basic as can be too: if you don’t know yourself, you can’t know anything, even your own thoughts, speech, and actions may not be you, how would you know? If the world clearly seems a certain way to you, you have to ask yourself, why is this what my mind looks to see? Why have I evolved the sense of that certain way? If the world is clearly a struggle and a fight to your mind, then you were evolved to see fighting, you have genes for fighting.

It follows that of course we have other genes with other concerns as well, and the current and long time social narrative is that these others have to live around the fighting. The current and long time idea is that you “have the fighting genes,” end of story, it’s static, created Human nature in new words, we are still and forever dealing with them, but of course what is missing from the conversation is the environmental control of genetic expression. If our other genes and other concerns wish to change anything about the fighting, we need to take that argument a level deeper, and undermine the gene, find a way to stop selecting it.

If we could adjust the environment away from abuse, our children would be slightly less under its control, and this would give their children a better chance to do the same. This was my parenting plan – you want to make God laugh? Never mind, it’s still my theory.

Come on, this was easy, it’s obvious. The minute I heard of epigenetics, this was all sitting there, obvious.

There are fighting genes in humans, and there is epigenetics, and there is spanking: the gene, the control mechanism, and us working it like an oar, making sure from approximately birth, that the environment is a fight, ensuring the activation and repeated selection of the war genes. Plain as day, I have had trouble expressing this because I assumed it was obvious and simple and everyone knew, I swear to God. How do we not? Do you not?

I mean, this obvious truth is buried under a ton of flummery.

Freud’s drives are just the static Nature broken down into components, balancing them seems to be all that can be done and I guess most people manage it well enough? Primatology too, just talks about the past, the “making of our Nature,” or something, it looks away from our this-minute evolution too. Any system of human parts and components comes out of the static meme, the meaningful parts are behaviour and genetics, not the structural hardware.

What if your baseline “Human Nature,” was a moving thing, a foundation of shifting mud? (the following I wrote a few days ago on Twitter.)

What if?

What if there were those “warrior genes?”

What if there were? What might the world look like?

Well, you’d expect war – check.

You might expect some rape, warrior genes selecting themselves – check.

You might expect a military sort of social organization, an hierarchy of authority – check.

You might expect that a creature with such genes admires and promotes strength and aggression – check. Ask me if you don’t believe me. It’s most of the blog.

You might expect a development that turns adorable babies into aggressive adults – check. Again, I’m always writing this.

You would expect that individuals lacking the selected for aggression would be pathologized and/or marginalized, perhaps killed – check. (Won’t make you ask: all the “gender critique,” can and should be seen as patriarchy, warrior patriarchy and they don’t really care if boys love boys, but they care terribly if boys love at all and hate insufficiently. This would seem to be the obvious aim of male circumcision, so we do things for this reason.)

Enough?

Show me something about people that says we DON’T have and live from our warrior genes.

Every argument you have for a nasty Human Nature would support warrior genes, wouldn’t they?

Has this book been written yet?

😘

(back to live on Saturday.)

I suppose if the book existed I would have found it by now. I want to write it, but I’m doing this instead.

I’m jaded; I don’t have the hope that we will do this, see our own making, and I have to say, it means all that nineteenth century talk about consciousness is rubbish, that if we don’t see this first level deep into ourselves, we cannot claim to have it. We remain beasts indeed, as long as we do not take this step.

Jeff

May 13th., 2023

The Double Masking Problem – no, sorry: The Shadow Empathy Problem

Jeff/neighsayer2 Comments

Written on Twitter:

I seem to have had a non-standard experience. I didn’t know, didn’t know to mask, I just got high and went into the breach numbed and otherwise as my weird self. It’s true there wasn’t any social success.

I suppose there were times when small talk seemed easier. Hyperlexic, if I couldn’t produce any small talk, I sometimes said so, talked about that: I’m sorry, I wish I had some small talk for you. I’m here. ❤️

I suppose I’m always wishing I could STFU.

It’s either this or I am just still brutally unaware.

I’m trying to find it, that’s why I’m talking: you know the NT version of “the mask?” That’s the one my people were talking about the whole time, what is not “the shadow,” is “the mask,” the mask is what people allow themselves to see about themselves, our FB selves, while the shadow is our dark side, the things we will not acknowledge, and everyone has one, they say, it is filled with Freud’s dark drives and the seven deadly sins, and aspects of ourselves that we use as insults for others. Basically, your shadow is that bad penny, evil Human Nature’s bad side. Your (NT psychological) mask, is your cherry-picked personality – OMG, hey, it is so good to think in text! #ActuallyAutistic , everyone come in, check this.

NTs have one theory of masking as part of their theory of mind, and Autists have an entirely different one as part of ours, wait for it – so we see them masking, conforming, our theory of mind says: “there’s something more going on underneath, surely they understand more than they’re saying they do.”

But when THEY detect an Autistic  masking, what does THEIR theory of mind tell them?

What is behind a mask in their minds?

THE SHADOW.

Oh my gawd, this is the DEP, they see us masking, and what is behind our mask in their theories is everything they have already decided they hate about themselves.

For real, y’all. This has truthiness from here to Timbuktu, I believe it already. Ouch. (I can bounce this off of someone IRL, one who was and is very into shadow work and such.

I’ll get back. ❤️ )

“Empathy,” was close, that’s part of it, what is buried in our shadow we lack empathy for (repression, per Alice Miller); the shadow is all that is repressed in us, the blind spot.

But these are not two individual versions of the same phenomenon, these masks.

In theory, Autistics have a psychological mask also, of course, repressed things – but it’s not that mask we get caught out at, NT people don’t bust each other or anyone for the shadow’s mask. It is not two psychological masks passing in the night, not a different bunch of micro-empathies from otherwise identical systems like a language problem, but a two theories of what an Autist’s mask is covering problem. The NT only knows the shadow and projects and assumes the worst.

I got Autistic therapists here, right? Surely they know the shadow and the whole world is here before me? The big takeaway, I guess, Autists, get yourself a counsellor that has done their shadow work, one that has the chops to understand their own reactions to people, I’d want to know they had the idea.

Jeff May 4th., 2023